Midsummer Night Fantasies
Opening speech by Dr Christine Jung
“Sommernachtsphantasien” (Midsummer Night Fantasies) is the promising title of Red Corridor’s new exhibition: an exhibition full of artistic fantasies around one or several summer nights, which promise and hint at much, but also depict much and leave much open. But what lies behind this promising title? Which feelings, which images come to light here? What do we, or you, associate with midsummer night fantasies? Is it something poetic or provocative, something hot or cool, something dark and hidden or starlit? Is it perhaps the zest for life, joy and cheerfulness, the lightness of being, the magic of the moment, or the dreamlike and fairy-tale? Or are they rather concrete visions of nature and pure idyll, of starry skies, campfires and guitar playing, of scents and fragrances, of warmth and well-being?
These are only a few of the many ideas that are named again and again when people are asked about midsummer night fantasies. Of course, the associations are each time very individual and subjective, often clearly related to nature and its sensual perception. Mostly, however, they ultimately revolve – more or less ambiguously – around one central core: the sensual and love, not only physical but also spiritual and emotional love; that is, the erotic in its many forms as sensual desire, as longing for something else or for the other, whether veiled or unveiled, in bodily or natural form.
The artists of the group Red Corridor have also engaged in this exhibition with midsummer night fantasies in general and with the erotic in particular. From different sides, they approach in their works this multi-layered theme, which has always – in all times, in all countries and cultures – occupied artists. In doing so they follow a tradition thousands of years old, which has produced a wealth of artistic representations over time: beginning with erotic allusion or veiling and encoding, the broad spectrum of erotic art extends through various stages of courtship and playful seduction to the depiction of nudes, to spicy scenes or drastic sensuality. Depending on the historical context, depending on religious or social ideas, the erotic image changed in cultic and mythical times, in strictly moralising eras or in the course of progressive liberalisation and the sexual revolutions. Just as attitudes to eroticism changed over the centuries, so did its representation in the visual arts: sometimes explicit and uninhibited, sometimes ambiguous and ambivalent, sometimes witty or humorous, but also melancholy and serious.
When the artists of the group Red Corridor place nocturnal fantasies at the centre of their summer exhibition, they too show the erotic in its many forms. In their works – the pictures, flags, objects and sculptures – different aspects come to light again and again: in a poetic-lyrical, a symbolic-encoded or a direct-concrete way. After the gallery Red Corridor’s last, rather serious and critical exhibitions (such as the StattMesse or the Kleintierzuchtverein), the artist group today presents a special show that at first glance is summery, airy, cheerful and full of the joy of life. But here too there are always two or more sides, there are unambiguous or ambiguous representations that invite the viewer on several levels to individual sensual perception.
The artist Joanna Skurska, who comes from Poland, designs and weaves multi-layered textile objects from coloured wires, which here float in the air, hang on the walls or lie on plinths: poetic-looking garments, or rather lingerie, very feminine and figure-hugging, very filigree and transparent, pointing to various contents and awakening various fantasies. On the one hand they present themselves bodiless, as empty shells that reveal an imaginary interior. On the other hand they themselves take on an almost bodily form, becoming, as it were, an independent being with its own name and individual personality. Whether artfully draped or with emphasised contours, in dense layers or in open forms, festive gown or tightly laced corset – the imaginative creations in mostly glowing copper red stage the feminine and bear witness to various contexts. They are mediators or media of varying feelings or ideas: of adornment and protection, but also armour and cage, of confinement, masking and disclosure, of the inside in the outside and vice versa. In this sense the artist shows in her textile objects something that was, is or could be there. In the “garment” of the visible she shows something invisible; with the form she hints at a content and at the same time leaves it open, so that even what is absent can exert great charm and an immense attraction.
In the work of Rudi Neuland, the human being and his body stand at the centre of figurative-abstract representation. For this exhibition the artist has created a series of flags that set the isolated head, in contrasting colour and form, apart from the painterly backgrounds. With their physiognomies, mostly only hinted at and reduced to the essential, they often appear inward-looking, concentrated on inner events, on different moods or emotions. The faces are accompanied by the words of Pablo Neruda, quotations from his lyrical work, from the love poems, which in this context embody something glowingly romantic and very passionate, but also melancholy and moving. In Rudi Neuland’s sculptural work too, differently stirred emotions can be sensed behind the exterior. Next to a female statue, whose fragmentary forms emphasise the soft, curved and feminine, rises the herm-like figure of a man with his head tilted far back and upward, with a wide-open, torso-like upper body, a markedly tensed abdomen and the sign of his masculinity. In this open posture and at the same time closed, inward-turned facial expression, very intimate, changeable moods are expressed: states of tension between inside and outside, perhaps a very sensual experience between tension and relaxation, which in this fragmentary representation hints at much and at the same time leaves it open.
The third artist of the group Red Corridor, Leszek Skurski, devotes his series of pictures to the erotic pose through the ages. He renders the view of the woman in light pastel-like colours, as it was captured in so-called pin-ups in wartime and post-war periods and pinned to walls. On show are sentimental, romanticising or patriotic stagings, embedded in a narrative moment, which present the erotic with many objects of desire, not only physical ones: they show the more or less clothed woman in a miniskirt with a rifle in front of barracks, in a low-cut, billowing dress on a bicycle, or in a bikini against a sunny blue sky. They are more suggestive than revealing images, which in times of strict censorship counted as erotic and which today are viewed from a completely different angle, with completely different eyes. Much has changed over time and in the flood of images – above all the erotic gaze. Much more that is unveiled can be seen today, everywhere and omnipresent, many more clear or unambiguous poses that embody much that is intimate but – depending on perspective – can also leave much open to the imagination. In Leszek Skurski’s second series of pictures a clear tension is built up, not only in posture or gesture but above all in the gaze, which is self-assured and challenging, seemingly without distance but with clear remove, directed out of the picture at the viewer.
The artist Gosia Krakowiak, who lives in Poland and was invited to this exhibition by the gallery Red Corridor, deals with other, or rather further-reaching, fantasies, with a different erotic representation. In her brightly coloured paintings the figurative seems to blur and merge: in the darkness of the night, in empty azure space, under a parasol or in front of a grid-like structure. Again and again it is two people, the union of man and woman, the act of love, that is depicted here in different positions. And each time indistinct in detail but unambiguous in context, so that here too imagination is called for and the viewer is challenged to their own visions.
It is these and other midsummer night fantasies that are at the centre of the exhibition today and here. Again and again they revolve around one central theme: love and Eros, that driving force of life which, it is said, is also the origin of all artistic creation, or the root of all art, which according to Picasso “can never be chaste”. The erotic has always exerted a great attraction on artists – and here too it presents itself as a source of inspiration for manifold imaginations that have become picture or sculpture and point beyond the purely physical. For everyone the erotic or beautiful in a midsummer night fantasy is something different: sometimes it is the veiled or unveiled, then again the unambiguous or ambiguous, the absent or present. Everyone associates different fantasies with this hard-to-grasp phenomenon. And everyone views it from a different perspective and with different feelings: sometimes amused or shocked, sometimes attracted or repelled, sometimes stimulated and sensitised.
With many forms and manifestations of Eros the artists engage in their midsummer night fantasies: they address the erotic sphere of temptation and union, of wishful thinking and desire, of love, passion and lust, and much more. In their predominantly figurative representations they thus reflect something abstract, something invisible. They show something that can only be grasped in its entirety by hint: a certain mood and atmosphere, a certain tension, the attraction of the other. They are “embodied” fantasies, which in turn lead to new imaginations and, beyond that, refer the viewer back to themselves. In this sense art and eroticism also appear together here: “as great seducers” (as it was once put in another context) who can seduce people to themselves: to their own fantasies, to individual visions of one or several summer nights.